Obmutesce pater mendacii ✠ Be silent, father of lies
sharp i tell you,, sharp: The ruling led to sharp exchanges between the two black justices on the bench, Clarence Thomas & Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In his concurrence, Thomas stressed the importance of individual achievement, opposing the use of race as a heuristic and advocated for a “colorblind” Constitution.
Jackson fired back with a fervent dissent in which she accused Thomas of being obsessed with race consciousness and argued that the ruling, in essence, ignored the existence of racial disparities both historically and in the present day.
Her dissent provoked a strong response from Thomas, who countered her view of a fundamentally racist society and her broad categorization of all blacks as victims.
In an unusual and high-profile move, Thomas took issue with Jackson’s dissent, challenging her arguments that the ruling ignored the historical and present reality of “racial disparities.”
Thomas was brutal as he critiqued Jackson’s claims of statistical disparities and her characterization that black individuals are “victims.”
“Her labeling of all blacks as victims based on such observations is unfathomable,” Thomas said.
The Daily Caller published excerpts of Thomas’ rebuke. Arguing that Jackson’s claims of racial disparities is both harmful and inaccurate, Thomas wrote:
Justice Jackson uses her broad observations about statistical relationships between race and select measures of health, wealth, and well-being to label all blacks as victims. Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me.”
I cannot deny the great accomplishments of black Americans, including those who succeeded despite long odds.
Nor do Justice Jackson’s statistics regarding a correlation between levels of health, wealth, and well-being between selected racial groups prove anything.
Of course, none of those statistics are capable of drawing a direct causal link between race — rather than socioeconomic status or any other factor — and individual outcomes. So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste.
Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.
[Universities cannot] use the applicant’s skin color as a heuristic, assuming that because the applicant checks the box for ‘black’ he therefore conforms to the university’s monolithic and reductionist view of an abstract, average black person.
